15-year-old Indian-American boy graduates as engineer, starts PhD in US

A 15-year-old Indian-American child prodigy has reached a milestone in his academic journey and is all set to start his doctorate after completing his graduation in biomedical engineering, according to a media report. Tanishq Abraham graduated from the University of California, Davis with the highest honours of summa cum laude.

"Of course I feel very happy, very excited, and I'm very proud of my accomplishments," Tanishq was quoted as saying by the FOX40.

"He's got a lot of passion and we have to keep up with him, pretty much," said his parents, Taji and Bijou Abraham, hailing from Kerala.

Tanishq has also designed a device that could measure the heart rate of burn patients without touching them. At age 7, he had published an essay about astronomy on the NASA Lunar Science website, and has also given a TEDx talk. As for the future, it's back into the lab at Davis for a PhD and eventually medical school.

Tanishq has big dreams of finding solutions to problems, the report said. "Yeah, of course, what everybody likes to say and what I am also interested in is, of course, cancer and developing new treatments for cancer, more effective treatments for cancer," he said.

Tanishq has already been accepted into the University of California, Davis graduate programme where he plans to get his MD in the next four to five years.